The pursuit of happiness

What is pleasure and what is happiness?
Pleasure is a positive feeling caused by the release of the hormone dopamine in the body. The process of secretion of this hormone is associated with the reward and punishment system of the brain. The brain communicates with the body's organs in two ways. One is very fast (neural impulse) and has a very fast effect, but its effect does not last long. The second method is through the secretion of hormones, which have a longer effect, but take some time to be activated in the body.
First I'll give a summary of some hormones and then delve into their relationship with pleasure and happiness.
Serotonin:
It is one of the most important and oldest brain hormones, as all mammals use serotonin to communicate between brain neurons. One of the effects of serotonin is to control a person's general mood. If you are fired from your job today, the level of serotonin will drop dramatically in your body, and this may lead to your depression. In return, if you win a million dollar prize today, your serotonin level will rise, which leads to your feeling of happiness. Most medications for depression, such as Prozac, are stimulants of serotonin production in the body.
Serotonin, in general, is secreted after sports of all kinds to help the body overcome the feeling of fatigue resulting from physical exertion. That is, the brain secretes it as a kind of drug to overcome the stage of post-physical effort.
Dopamine:
The pleasure hormone is an important component of the brain's reward system. The nervous system determines positive actions by releasing the hormone dopamine. Dopamine means “repeat that action because I like it.” This release associates dopamine with actions that the brain considers positive and is one of the foundations of addiction. For example, the nicotine in cigarettes stimulates the release of dopamine in the brain, so the smoker becomes addicted to nicotine. Drugs of all kinds are substances that stimulate the release of dopamine in varying proportions. Also, the sexual climax is a large dose of dopamine, so we find that the living cannot resist the sexual stimulation that precedes the sexual climax.
Dopamine release is not always associated with immediate reward, but it can be released for actions that we will reap positive results later.
Oxytocin:
This hormone has an important function in social terms, as it affects by increasing the feeling of love, trust and empathy with others, reducing the feeling of fear and strengthening the bonding relationships between individuals. The mother in the breastfeeding stage secretes a lot of oxytocin, which links the breastfeeding process with love and bonding between the mother and her child. This hormone is of great importance when talking about religions because of the issue of trust, empathy and social bonding. Any system of thought that exploits this hormone is a winning system.
Endorphins or morphine:
This hormone is responsible for relieving pain. It is excreted during exercise. For example, if we put an athlete on a treadmill and connect his brain with a scanner, we will find that the endorphin secretion sensors work actively after the jog as a result of physical exertion. In many cases this condition is called "The runner's high". The benefit of releasing this hormone after the physical effort is to reduce the pain caused by the physical effort, for this reason many athletes do not feel pain until after the end of the match. Most athletes are addicted to endorphins, so they continue to go to the gym and do their favorite sports on a regular basis.
To reward:
Previously, our ancestors had to work all day in order to get their daily meal, but if someone found a food source with high calories (honey for example), this means that he would not need to work all the time to secure his nutritional needs on that day. Securing the nutritional need without the need to work all day is very desirable and enhances the owner's chances of survival. That is why we find that high-calorie foods have a delicious taste and harmful foods (toxicity) have an unpleasant taste.
In the case of delicious foods, the brain associates them with a positive feeling ("It's a good job, do it again.") This binding process occurs by secreting a hormonal signature associated with the action. Whenever our ancestors find honey, for example, they remember that it is delicious and tastes good, not because the sugar compound has a magical taste, but because the sugar compound provides energy to the body effectively and because the brain linked this positive action through the secretion of positive hormones (dopamine).
This means that the actions that bring a quick benefit to the body, whether in the form of a dose of energy or an orgasm, the nervous system rewards itself by releasing the hormone dopamine.
Punishment:
On the other hand, just as the nervous system rewards us for good deeds, it punishes us for harmful actions (at its discretion).
For example, if we do something unhelpful for our survival such as ingesting toxic or spoiled foods, the brain punishes us and associates this action with a hormonal signature and a negative action (pain) so that we do not repeat it again.
Dopamine release is one of the most effective and oldest brain messages, as it is present in all living things. Pain on the other hand is a warning message that the body is being harmed, and we find that the mechanisms of feeling pain cannot be bypassed naturally because it is an alarm or an alarm device that must continue to send the message until the problem is addressed. Pain is an alarming device that cannot be bypassed normally.
More dopamine (addiction to pleasure):
Addiction is a brain condition related to the body's need to do something to stimulate the release of dopamine. There are substances that stimulate the release of dopamine, including nicotine, alcohol, and others (heroin and cocaine). In the case of addiction, the body adapts to the levels of dopamine released, and the sensitivity threshold for dopamine rises, so the nervous system requires greater amounts of the stimulant, and addicts feel that they need larger doses.
Candy Crush game has a wide reach among people and this is because it is a game that depends on the release of dopamine. The game is programmed in such a way that the difficulty of the stages is distributed randomly, considering the presence of a good amount of very easy stages. The player starts the game and each time he does a good deed he finds positive reinforcement phrases on the screen.
Over time, these statements become associated with small releases of dopamine. The player becomes addicted to these secretions until he reaches a difficult stage and finds it difficult to obtain the usual doses. Suddenly the game ends and tells the player to come back after a specified period of time or pay a sum of money to continue releasing dopamine.
Giving doses of dopamine and then stopping them suddenly causes a state of addiction in the user because he did not stop voluntarily, but his doses were taken from him involuntarily.
One last example of dopamine addiction is .Facebook relies on the same mechanism. Each like causes a small release of dopamine as well as many other factors related to our need for social contact (oxytocin).You browse Facebook every day because you are addicted to dopamine.

The psychological pressure
The psychological pressure that we constantly feel today is the result of our suffering from debts, financial obligations and the difficulties of life in general.

We remember that we did not pay the phone premium or we did not pay the electricity bill. Or we forgot the homework. We live within a social structure that keeps us on alert. We are constantly on the run from predatory bills. This state of constant psychological pressure and constant state of terror enters the body in a closed negative cycle that has effects that worsen the situation, and that is why most of us find themselves unable to find solutions to get out of this psychological spiral.
Happiness as a result of pleasure:
Happiness is a general condition related to hormonal stability in the body. The person who achieves hormonal stability most of the time is a happy person. Whenever your choices are options that contribute to naturally positive hormonal secretions, you are heading towards a generally happy state. The difference between happiness and pleasure is that pleasure is a tactic and happiness is a strategy. The more natural methods you have for hormonal stability, the closer you will be to a state of happiness.
In my view, the best way to search for happiness is for a person to organize his life so that he can obtain the hormonal doses I mentioned earlier without having to rely on external stimuli far from his control. For example, the ability to obtain dopamine without relying on nicotine or the secretion of endorphins (hormones that reduce pain sensing) through exercise and not drug doses or oxytocin through physical family bonding and not fake relationships that can dissipate without human control.